RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/193545-reddit-science-forum-banks-climate-change-deniers

The social news site Reddit is banning climate change deniers from its science forum, a moderator for the site said.

Nathan Allen, the moderator for the forum /r/science — which provides a digital space for people to discuss recent, peer-reviewed science publications — wrote about the move to ban skeptics of climate science on Grist. A representative for Reddit confirmed the decision with The Hill.

While the science forum is a small section of Reddit, it has 4 million subscribers, Allen noted, which is nearly twice the circulation of The New York Times.

“After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor,” Allen said in his post for Grist.

Allen said that while some commenters did object to the move, given Reddit’s claim to preserve free speech at all costs, most users have welcomed the change.

He said the news industry should follow suit.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/mandela-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Ann-Marie Murrell, Monty Morton and Dwight Schultz.

The Gang gathered to discuss The Direction of Health Care if ObamaCare Persists. The dialogue occurred in Part II and examined the damage that is in store to Americans’ healthcare if Obama gets his way. The segment also shed light on: Does a $17 Trillion Debt Really Matter?

In Part I, the Gang shed light on Mandela and Double Standards (see Daniel Greenfield’s article The Mandela Myth). The episode also focused on “Elian Gonzalez Leaves Cuba For First Time,” “Obama’s Handshake with Raul Castro,” and much, much more.

See both parts of the two-part series below:

Part I:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/egypt-buries-the-brotherhood/print/

It’s not unusual for the United States and a Muslim country to be on the opposite sides of the War on Terror. It is unusual for a Muslim country to take a stand against terrorism while the United States backs the right of a terrorist group to burn churches, torture opposition members and maintain control of a country with its own nuclear program.

But that’s the strange situation in what Egypt’s public prosecutor has declared “the biggest case of conspiracy in the country’s history.”

The media assumes that the charges accusing Muslim Brotherhood leaders of conspiring with Hamas and Hezbollah, passing state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and plotting to help foreign terrorists kill Egyptian soldiers is a show being put on for Western audiences. They couldn’t be more wrong.

This isn’t about winning international PR points. It’s about destroying the credibility of the Brotherhood in the eyes of Egyptians and burying it along with what’s left of the Arab Spring in the waters of the Nile.

Obama assumed that cuts to military aid would force Egypt to restore the Muslim Brotherhood to power. He was wrong and the latest round of criminal charges show just how wrong he was.

The charges that the Muslim Brotherhood conspired with Hamas and Hezbollah to unleash a wave of terror against Egypt go to the heart of this struggle between the Egyptian nationalism of the military and the Islamic transnationalism of the Muslim Brotherhood. They paint the Muslim Brotherhood as not merely corrupt or abusive, the way that many tyrannies are, but as a foreign subversive element.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/the-myth-of-turkish-secularism/

Turkey is a secular state. So claim its government and nearly all mainstream Western media. They are mistaken.

In civilized, democratic countries, secularism means not only a respectful separation between church and state but also freedom of religion. As we shall demonstrate, Turkish policies have long been the antithesis of secularism.

The Turkish government massively supports and funds Islam – specifically Sunni Islam – inside the country. Turkey simultaneously represses religions such as Alevism, and bullies and persecutes indigenous Christians, most of whom it liquidated in 20th century genocides. Moreover, it uses Islam to project Turkish political power into Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Turkey’s system is more properly termed State Islam.

This article is not a criticism of Islam or its faithful. We respect both. Turkey’s secularism myth, nevertheless, cries out to be laid bare.

State Islam

The Directorate of Religious Affairs – known as the Diyanet – is the government body that represents and directs all of Sunni Islam in Turkey. Created in 1924, a year after the Republic of Turkey was formed, the Diyanet is enshrined in Article 136 of the Turkish Constitution. The Diyanet is huge and powerful. Operating under the Prime Minister, it employs about 100,000. All Sunni clergy are salaried civil servants of the Diyanet.

“The central mitzvah or commandment for out era is the mitzvah of Tikkun Olam. It is the defining mission of Jews to strive for the repair of the world by making society more just, fair, egalitarian, and sensitive. Judaism demands that we repair the world by striving for social justice. It is the mission of Jews in the Divine Plan for the universe to repair the world by repairing man, by improving and advancing mankind.”

The above paragraph is a fair representation of what has become the defining raison d’etre of Judaism as conveyed by non-Orthodox liberal Jewish organizations and synagogues in America. It is not a direct citation from any, but is an accurate paraphrase of what has become the canon of non-Orthodox Jewish liberalism, in essence the orthodoxy of the non-Orthodox. It is the “modernized” and contemporary “reinterpretation” of “Jewish ethics” as defined and inculcated by much of the Reform and Conservative movements. It is also the entire “theology” of the pseudo-Jewish radical leftist groups operating at the fringes of the Jewish community, including the “Renewal/ALEPH” movement, the “Eco-Judaism” groups, the “Tikkun community” of people and groups that are satellites to the magazine by that same name published by pseudo-Rabbi Michael Lerner, and what remains of the “Reconstructionists.” Lerner discovers “repair of the world” even in LSD consumption.

So just what are we to make of the above “Tikkun Olam” proclamation and manifest?

The most important thing that must be understood about the Tikkun Olam catechism of non-Orthodox Judaism in the United States is that each and every sentence in the above proclamation is false.

First of all, there is no such thing as a mitzvah or commandment of “Tikkun Olam.” Jews are nowhere commanded to “repair the world.” In all the authoritative or traditional compilations of the commandments of Judaism, none list “Tikkun Olam” as one of them. The expression itself does not appear anywhere in the Torah or in the entire Bible. Those assimilationist liberals who insist that the entire “ethics of the Prophets” can be reduced to the pursuit of “Tikkun Olam” will have to explain why none of the Books of the Prophets use the term. “Tikkun Olam” is used sporadically in the Talmud, but as a technical term for resolution of certain judicial problems that arise before rabbinic courts. The only place where the expression appears in Jewish prayer is in the “Aleinu” and there it clearly has nothing at all to do with social justice. In the “Aleinu,” Tikkun Olam is explicitly explained in the prayer text itself as the quest to eliminate pagan superstition and to see God’s rule of the universe implemented. In other words, it is a theological notion, not a social or political or environmental one. In Judaism, the world does not get repaired by redistribution of income and wealth nor by cutting carbon emissions but by humans subordinating themselves to God’s will.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/relentless/?print=1

During the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing [1] last week on the Iran nuclear deal, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) addressed [2] Secretary of State Kerry about the lack of enforcement of Iran sanctions since the election of Iranian President Rouhani. Sherman said there were “dozens and dozens” of companies sanctioned in the first half of this year, but only one designation since June; he said he hoped we were not “slow-walking things” on account of Rouhani. Two days later, the State Department sanctioned 19 new people or companies, with a press release [3] saying this showed the administration will “relentlessly enforce” existing sanctions.

Relentlessly! The State Department was using the magic Obama codeword — the one that strikes fear in the hearts of foreign foes, domestic criminals, and opponents of the Miami Heat.

Two weeks after the U.S. ambassador (the personal representative of the president under the law) was murdered on 9/11/12, along with three other Americans, in an organized terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, President Obama appeared before the assembled representatives of the world at the UN. He called [4] the attacks “an assault on America” and promised we would be “relentless in tracking down the killers.” This reflected a long-standing Obama principle: back in May 2011, a year-and-a-half before Benghazi, the president said [5] “we will never…stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens.”

As for criminals, this year President Obama nominated Kenneth Polite, Jr. to be U.S. attorney in Louisiana. In a press release, the president said [6] he was confident Mr. Polite “will be relentless in his pursuit of justice.” In 2012, Mr. Obama nominated John S. Leonardo as U.S. attorney for Arizona; the president said [7] he was confident Judge Leonardo “will be relentless in his pursuit of justice.” In 2011, he nominated George L. Beck to be U.S. attorney for Alabama; Mr. Obama said [8] it was because of Mr. Beck’s “diligence and relentless pursuit of justice.” In 2010, Mr. Obama nominated David Fein and Timothy Purdon [9] and later Charles Oberley [10] as U.S. attorneys. Can you guess what the President was confident of in all three cases, as well as seven others [11]?

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/12/18/judges-decision-striking-nsa-program-will-not-stand/?print=1 Here at Ordered Liberty in late July, I opined that the national-security right was losing the debate over the National Security Agency’s controversial telephony “metadata” program. On Monday, a federal district judge in Washington ruled that the program violates the Fourth Amendment and must be dismantled. The decision, naturally, prompted standing ovations from our […]

The lamentable state of Afghanistan is the fault of the corrupt, appeasing Karzai government, not British, American or other liberating forces who have done a fine job, under the circumstances

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4472/afghanistan_uk_s_accomplishment_karzai_s_failure

For all the isolationist chatter about the War in Afghanistan, from invoking poor clichés like the warrant for the “world’s policemen” to positing bad conscience comments about dead children, not very many people saw an alternative to a direct invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Need a refreshment as to why?

There had been the worst single attack on the West in living memory; there was a government in Afghanistan which not only licensed and praised this attack, it promised to do everything within its power to obstruct justice.

That government controlled a rogue state, comparable only with Iraq and Iran in terms of its threat to other countries; within this rogue state, aside from the flouting of nearly every international law regarding terrorism, its people were starving, bankrupt and under threat every day by religious barbarians demanding the most literal interpretation of a very old and, in the wrong hands, not very moral book.

Fast forward over twelve years, and British Prime Minister David Cameron declares “mission accomplished”; that the invasion of Afghanistan was a success. Many have already seen fit to criticize this statement. After all, nearly 500 British soldiers are dead, as well as heaven knows how many Afghan civilians, and approximately 10,000 brave members of the Afghan security forces who are determined to reach a level where they can police their own country.

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/12/soviet-influence-myth-vs-reality/

John Dietrich is an expert on Soviet penetration of the United States government before, during, and after World War Two. He is the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (see the ad on our sidebar), and has contributed several comments over the past few months to the discussion at Gates of Vienna about American Betrayal. The essay below is his response to the unpleasant ad-hominem attacks mounted against Ms. West by Conrad Black, among others.

Soviet Influence: Myth vs. Reality
by John Dietrich

Diana West’s book American Betrayal has generated a great deal of heat. Her critics, many of whom proudly proclaim they have not read her book, resort to name-calling. Conrad Black has called West and her supporters “pernicious, destructive, fatuous idiots.” Her book is filled with, “yellow journalism conspiracy theories,” “unhinged theories,” and “counterfactual speculations.” She is “McCarthy’s heiress.” Her supporters “hurl the vitriol of the silly and the deranged.”

I suppose that this is different than the vitriol hurled by the serious and stable.

The intensity of the attacks on West reveal that she has struck a nerve. I differ with some of her conclusions, but I would not think of calling her an idiot. I disagree with almost everything Conrad Black claims, and the harshest thing I can say about him is that he is allowing his emotions to distort his findings.

These events bring to mind a quote from Margaret Thatcher: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”

Diana West’s book is significant. Vladimir Bukovsky has stated that it will make history.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/a_conversation_with_mike_lee.html

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) is the new maverick of the Republican Party. He is a straight talker who was elected in the 2010 wave of the Republican comeback. Senator Lee has distinguished himself in speaking out on issues such as ObamaCare, using his experience as a Constitutional lawyer to explain this disastrous law. American Thinker had the pleasure of interviewing this up and coming Republican.

American Thinker: Recently Congressman Peter King (R-NY) has formed an anti-Tea Party PAC targeting Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Is this an example of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot?

Senator Mike Lee: No political party can win elections without a base; yet, at the same time Conservatives must understand that we cannot move the country in the right direction until we win elections. I would advise anyone who wants to attack our base that if most of us cannot get on the same page the country will continue to lurch towards the left. Those who attack our base are impairing the ability of their own party to win elections.

AT: Playing the devil’s advocate, those in the Republican Party like Congressman King have accused the Tea Party of being too Conservative and too uncompromising. Do you agree?

ML: I think those Republicans should explain what they mean when they attack people like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and myself. What does that mean? Does that mean we are too Conservative with the principles of the Republican Party? After all, we are a Conservative Party. Do they want this party driven more by the lobbyists and the media’s whims of the day? I fundamentally disagree with them. Compromise is not a substantive outcome but is inevitability in a legislative system that involves more than one person. The question is not whether you are going to compromise, but how and where. That is where principles come into play, something very important to voters.

AT: Paul Ryan defends his budget deal by explaining that Republicans in Congress are only one-third of a whole, that elections have consequences. Do you agree?

ML: I have some significant concerns with it. We are putting off those spending cuts for a decade or so while increasing the cost of government. This is based on a promise that we will cut more in a decade or so from now. Experience has taught us that kind of promise is very unlikely to be honored. Some of my other concerns are related to public land in states like my own. Because of all my concerns I will be voting against the deal.